


october fic prompts

by catpoop



Series: Tumblr Dot Hell [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: BOM! Keith, Coffee Shops, Crack, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dreamsharing, Fluff, Hugs, M/M, Sharing Clothes, Studying, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-07 09:31:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12230178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catpoop/pseuds/catpoop
Summary: It's october! time to draw, or in My Case, learn to write. send me tumblr prompts :3c1. More fluff. In the form of autumnal cafe dates :)2. Sheithy hugs!3. Keith is a clothes-stealing DEMON4. Shiro comes to Keith's rescue during a late-night study session5. Keith meets Shiro on the astral plane6. Keith finds some quicksand (crack)7. Shiro's a friendly ghost + Keith can hear him... tbc





	1. pumpkins + cafe dates

**Author's Note:**

> want to request a fic? feel free to send an ask at my tumblr: swummeng-geys.tumblr.com

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yongjae37 asked: PUMPKINS LATTE'S AND FLUFF

Shiro usually has a pretty tolerant attitude towards coffee, i.e. his saviour, black gold of the edible kind, and the only reason he’s up before noon. So it comes as a dull shock to him when he finds himself refusing to follow Keith to the nearest café.

“Their autumn decorations are already up! You know I –”

_Never celebrated Halloween or gorged on enough pumpkin-related foods to go into cardiac arrest._

“Okay, okay, we can pop by in the afternoon.”

\-----

Keith’s out the door before Shiro can yell _“Pumpkin spice my ass!”_ and he follows begrudgingly. Well, financial independence has its benefits, and seeing as Keith’s birthday is a month and a half away, he probably has the responsibility of going out there and buying every single pumpkin thing Keith wants.

\-----

Keith sets a tall tower of whipped cream on the table. Shiro watches unimpressed from behind his double shot of espresso.

“Is there even any coffee in that?”

“I’m not here for the coffee, Shiro.” He punctuates his statement with a rather explicit tongue-on-cream movement, and Shiro feels his ears burn red. “I’m here for the _spirit_.”

“The what? The spirits of the slaughtered pumpkins that were used to make that ‘drink’?”

Keith sucks loudly on the straw. “Don’t forget the cake, too.”

Right. The pumpkin spice … loaf sitting innocently beside his drink. Strangely enough, it’s not dyed a shade of lurid orange.

“Do want to try some?” Keith nudges the tall glass across the table, its whipped-cream toupee a little sadder than before.

Shiro sputters on his boiling, caffeinated lava. “No?”

“Trust me, it’s good.”

Shiro makes a plaintive sound as Keith starts to dig into his cake with vigour, drink all but forgotten. Well …

It tastes like sugar on his tongue. Enough sugar to preserve a mouldy pumpkin, and just enough cinnamon to make him want to sneeze.

“Fuck, _Keith!_ Keith – don’t poison me!”

Keith raises a judgemental brow, looking as stern as he possibly can with a dollop of cream on his nose. “I tried an espresso once. I still haven’t recovered.” 

“It’s ‘cause you’re still youthful and sane.” Shiro hurriedly washes away the taste with another sip of his coffee. “And you’ve got – _something_ – just …” Keith yelps as he smears the cream into a caricature of the scar on his own nose.

“Hey!”

“… there.” Shiro trails off. He tries not to laugh as Keith stares, cross-eyed, at the pointy tip of his nose.

“How’d that get there?”

“… Your fault for ordering that crap.”

Be that as it may, Shiro can’t help but shout Keith a spiced latte or three in the following days, his sugar-fuelled hyperactivity the only drawback. But the covert, innocent grin that stretches across his face with each new Halloween-related _thing_ …

Shiro sighs.


	2. huGS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sshiros asked: the classic sheith hug(s)

The first time Keith distinctly remembers being hugged is when he’s wide-eyed, half-starved, and clinging to a scrap of cloth he wants to call Teddy. Thace is intimidating in his suit: tall, long-limbed, and too-close, too-soon that Keith stumbles on a cry and bursts into scared tears.

“Don’t worry, kitling, we’ve got you.”

He’s quickly appeased by offerings of food and familiar purple fur that he hasn’t seen since the outpost was attacked and his family scattered. 

Keith digs tiny fingers into thatches of purple and presses himself close.

\-----

In that sense, Shiro’s hugs are … similar and different at once. He doesn’t purr, nor groom Keith’s hair with a rough tongue. But the arms that tuck around his own body are the same, chest firm beneath his cheek and heartbeat thumping a familiar rhythm. A little off-centre compared to Thace’s, but soothing enough. Keith tucks his head further under Shiro’s chin, standing on his tip-toes to nuzzle at the exposed skin.

“Hey, uh – Keith,” Shiro’s heartbeat grows erratic, “I know we’re closer now, but it’s um, it’s been at least five minutes, and I have a class to go to soon.”

“That was how my – my sire did it,” Keith pouts, pulling away when Shiro gently pries him off.

“I’m not your _sire_ , but … we can be friends?”

For male friends they sure hugged often, enough for Shiro’s friends to smile lopsided smiles, for Matt to chastise them hours before the Kerberos launch, for Hunk to pull him aside and say,

_“Hey, man, um, it’s clear Shiro means a lot to you and you – to him, and I hope we’re not …”_

(It’s fine, Keith says, wiping the last traitorous tear-track off his face. Shiro looks at peace in his shack.)

… And for Shiro to tuck his head against Keith’s chest almost nightly now, hugging his slight figure tight and asking him for forgiveness.

_“I’m sorry for … the night terrors, they – they’re always there.”_

“It’s okay,” Keith replies, and the thrum in his chest is an almost-purr as he imagines them away to a safer place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope this was okay :3c


	3. keef steal clothe >:3c

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yongjae37 asked:  
> OVERLY FLUFFFY SWEATER STEALING BOY FRIENDS

Shiro slams shut his (their) wardrobe with a huff. “Keith! Keith, I swear to god!”

“Yeah?” Keith’s voice echoes from the other end of the apartment.

“Why do I only have _one_ sweater left in my entire half of the wardrobe?” He waves the accusing piece of clothing (the ugliest Christmas sweater he owns) all the way to where Keith is rooting about in the fridge, barely-clothed bottom sticking out.

“Hm?” He straightens up after a moment, half a slice of cake crammed in his mouth and the other half in his hand. “What’s up?”

Shiro frowns. Upon closer inspection, the dark, oversized article on Keith’s frame looks a little too like his own sweater. The second-to-last one that had been sitting just innocently in his cabinets just a day ago.

“You can’t keep _stealing_ my clothes, Keith.”

Keith swallows a mouthful of cake. “It’s called borrowing.”

“And not washing them or returning them afterwards?”

“They’re in the laundry room. Somewhere.” Rolling his eyes, Keith tugs him towards said room with a clean hand. “See?”

“No?” The laundry room is empty, save for a hamper of last week’s clothes. 

“Uh, yes.” Keith reaches in and pulls out – _oh, that sweater_. Riding up on pale thighs and – “S’got stains, see?”

“I don’t want to see the stains, Keith. And is that it? Where did all the others go?”

Keith hums in mock disinterest, licking icing off his hands.

“ _Keith!_ I’ll have to start stealing your sweaters if you keep this up.”

“Like that will go well.” Keith grins. “Well, have fun!” And with that, he lopes back off to the kitchen. Shiro rubs his temples.

Maybe … he just didn’t check his wardrobe fully. Scratching his head, Shiro throws the ugly sweater back onto his bed and peers at the single, barren shelf again. Nothing. He imagines crawling into the narrow space, but it wouldn’t make his search any more fruitful. 

And then he trips on a – “What the fuck?” _Goddamnit, Keith._ Because as he slides open the door to reveal Keith’s array of skinny pants and black tees, a veritable _ball_ of sweaters tumble out.

_“Keith! Stop hoarding my clothes!”_

_“Nope.”_


	4. keith tries to study...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yongjae37 asked:  
> Shiro delivering keith much needed coffee during a study crunch at 2 AM. Fluff happens and shiro bribes keith with cuddles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> need more cuddling in my lyfe

Text swims before Keith’s eyes. There’s a crick in his neck, the desk lamp is a migraine-inducing corona, and he’s still the same twenty pages into textbook, but – 

_Persevere, Kogane._

Keith groans. Maybe if he just took a quick power nap; Shiro’s good at those, rising from the dead after a precise fifteen-minute snooze looking brand-new. Slowly, he pillows his head on the comfortable pages of his textbook, and closes his eyes to the glare of his lamp.

He’s abruptly woken by a shake of his shoulder.

“Keith?” It’s Shiro. 

“Hrm?” Keith mumbles into the crook of his arm, not bothering to open his eyes

“Hey, I brought coffee. How much do you have left to read?”

“Coffee?” _Oh god I love this man._ Keith all but tackles Shiro, collapsing against his chest with a dramatic moan. “I don’t want to study anymore…”

“Isn’t your exam tomorrow morning?” Shiro chides, carefully setting the mug of instant coffee down on the table and patting Keith’s messy head of hair.

Keith groans. “I can just – do it when I wake up tomorrow…” He suggests, though both of them know that method has never worked.

“Well, you do you. But I went to the trouble of making coffee, so don’t forget to drink it.”

Shiro’s a dirty enabler, Keith thinks, a dirty dirty enabler. The coffee feels wonderful sliding down his throat, and he begrudgingly forces himself into an upright position (while Shiro himself lounges lazily on his bed) and focuses on the wall of text.

“How much more do you need to read?” Shiro asks.

“Um – a chapter and a half.”

“Okay.” Shiro’s voice grows low and languid. “Well, if you hurry up and finish, I’m promising cuddles.”

Keith darts an annoyed look at the man behind him. Cuddles sound like _heaven_. “You’re not even supposed to be here.”

“Go on, go do that studying of yours.”

It’s _hard_ to study when there’s six foot one of cuddly human teddy bear sprawled out on his bed, and Keith nearly gives in half a dozen times. He launches himself into Shiro’s arms the moment he can.

“Fi- _nished_.”

“Your breath smells like coffee.”

“Ugh.” But it’s too late to walk down to the bathrooms, and he’s just settled into that comfortable spot against Shiro’s chest, and there’s a heavy arm looped around his back, and –

Keith falls asleep before he can think of anything else.


	5. astral planing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> starriewolf asked:  
> Long-distance relationship where Shiro and Keith take advantage of the astral plane to date.

The first time it happens, Keith is half an hour into deep sleep and riding the nausea of a night spent video-chatting with Shiro. Grainy images of the interior of the Kerberos explorer soon morph into almost-tangible metal and quartz glass. Swallowing a gasp, Keith takes tentative steps through the empty body of the spacecraft towards where he knows the cabins are located – they’ve dissected every inch of this pioneering craft in class. 

And sure enough, there he finds Shiro, asleep himself and hair tousled from all that fidgeting he’d been doing during their chat.

“Shiro?” Keith tentatively reaches for the slightly stubbled surface of his cheek.

Shiro flutters, opens his eyes. “Hm … _Keith?_ ”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

The scary thing is, it feels _real_. Shiro’s sleeping bag isn’t large enough to fit two, so Keith curls up beside him, staring in rapt focus as Shiro lazily talks of his day. Like he’d had on webcam, but this time face-to-face.

“I’m glad you’re here, Keith. I miss you.”

_“I miss you too.”_

\-----

Keith wakes to a residual warmth, and he presses closer to where Shiro was beside him – until he realises he’s alone in his bed at the Garrison. It had been an enjoyable dream, he thinks, though pity it ended so soon.

But the dream is enough to tide him over until early evening, when he gets his first chance of the day to message Shiro, to tell him:

_“Hey, I had a dream about you last night.”_

I did too, Shiro responds.

Wait. That’s … strangely romantic, and Keith feels the corners of his mouth twitch upwards as he stares at the text onscreen.

_“Do you want to tell me about it? Or we can turn on video.”_

The latter, Shiro agrees, and Keith fumbles to start a call as he flops sideways down onto the bed, holding his phone out at arm’s length and smiling at the dark loading screen.

Shiro’s enthusiastic face meets his, voice tender. “Hey, Keith.”

“Hi.”

“How was your day?” Shiro asks, practised and familiar from every past shared day at the Garrison, but Keith never tires of the words.

“It was fine. Tell me about your dream first.”

“Right, okay. Well, this might sound strange, but I thought for a moment you had snuck on-ship! You were floating right in front of me and –” 

“Did I tell you about the bad joke Iverson made in chem?” Keith interrupts. There’s a strange sensation fluttering in his chest and he’s scared to know why.

Shiro’s look of surprise confirms his fears. “Ye-Yes you did. While I was in my sleeping quarters and you were –?”

“Curled up beside you?”

Shiro’s lets out a bewildered laugh. “Wh-What the fuck?”

“That’s one hell of a coincidence.”

“They sure don’t teach you about this in Psych. Is this some kind of … strange space magic?”

Keith rolls his eyes at his teasing tone. “Not your fault you don’t wanna believe in aliens.”

“Yeah, well, maybe it’s a sign we’re just really good friends.”

“The best of pals? Bros for life?”

Shiro chuckles at his incredulity. “Of course.”

For a pair of budding scientists, it doesn’t take long for them to stop hypothesising and to chalk the whole thing up to ‘space magic’.

“I’ll ask Doctor Holt about it later,” Shiro says offhandedly, and that concludes the discussion. He’s more curious as to how Keith’s coping in class, after all.

\-----

Of course, until it happens a second, then a third time.

Shiro stares down at the half-asleep body he’s straddling in a distinctly Garrison-regulation bed and gasps aloud.

“Keith?”


	6. bounce bounce sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> froldgapp asked:  
> Good ol' classic quicksand!

The vibrant blue dunes of Eyquksal look attractive, at first, until Lance takes the first brave step into the desert and screeches in terror.

“Quicksand! Quicksand! Help, Hunk, save me!”

Hunk has barely reached out a wary arm before Lance throws himself at his larger friend, clinging tight and shaking his right leg in distress.

“Hunk, Hunk! Did it eat my leg?”

“… no?” Hunk can distinctly feel a pair of lanky legs striking his side with each wail of distress. “Hey, buddy – the quicksand isn’t going to follow you up here. You can get off now.”

“Hmph.”

Well, even if they can’t actually _walk_ in the desert itself, the scenery is still nice. Hunk and Lance settle beside their respective Lions, waiting for the others to breach the atmosphere. (“Your fault for being so enthusiastic about hot alien babes,” Hunk mutters.)

And then a streak of red blurs past them – the Red Lion and her pilot … ejecting himself out of her mouth and somersaulting right into the desert?

“No! KEITH!”

“Lance, he’s just – no!”

They watch in horror as Keith, the fool, descends rapidly towards the blue plains, as if his jetpacks were disabled.

Hunk cradles his face in his hands. “Oh my god, Lance, what do we do? What if he dies – or drowns – or,”

With how much they’re shouting into their communicators, it’s no surprise Keith can hear them. But it takes a little more effort on their part to hear the calm, quiet, and slightly-staticky:

“Did someone say quicksand? I love quicksand.”

Lance rushes forwards in terror, teetering on the edge of the black schist their Lions are perched on, to see Keith land gently on the quicksand. 

“Holy shit, Shiro! Shiro, get down here, Keith has a death wish!”

Shiro’s yell is loud enough to drown out both him and Keith. Who, strangely enough, sounds like he’s quietly giggling to himself. Lance shoots him a murderous glare.

“Keith, I swear to god, if you don’t get out of there – and _stop_ bouncing!”

“What is he doing!” Shiro yells. 

“Bouncing! In quicksand!”

As though it wasn’t chaotic enough already, Hunk joins the fray, grasping at Lance and staring at Keith in horror. “No! No, why is he – What if he drowns? Oh god, someone save him!”

“I like –” Keith responds, but he’s quickly cut off by a trio of yells, until finally, finally, Black swoops down from the sky like an angel, Shiro muttering something about _Keith don’t die you’re so young so full of potential oh my god_ – 

Keith pauses in his bouncing to stare up at the sky, barely flinching as Black opens her mouth and swallows him whole, Shiro sobbing in relief the entire time.

( _“I just – I just like quicksand,”_ Keith grouses later. _“It reminds me of home.”_ )


	7. ghosties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous asked:  
> Shiro, the friendly ghost and Keith.... the medium.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah i took a lil break from writing :/

The first time it happens, Keith nearly slams his face into the door. Woozily, he attempts a complicated side-step to manoeuvre himself out of the doorway and back into the kitchen, where he rubs his temples and winces at the sudden:

“ _You left the stove on_ ,” booming in his ears.

“I – what?”

“ _Stove_ ,” The voice repeats, sounding a touch irritated. It’s a nice, mellow voice, so Keith doesn’t immediately recognise it as coming from something not _physically_ in his house until he whirls a full-360 in confusion.

Keith slowly switches the stove off. “What are you?” He asks, voice tinged with annoyance. There’s nothing he can see, save the faint flicker of dust in a nearby sunbeam.

“ _I’m Shiro_ ,” the voice replies behind his ear.

“Yeah, but _what_ are you?”

This is unusual, Keith thinks. He's never been approached outside of work, and definitely not in his own kitchen – haunting-free, from his last check.

“ _Just a lonely soul_.”

Shiro's a lot calmer than some others he's summoned for various clients, but Keith shivers anyway at the feeling of foreign eyes prickling the back of his head. He gives the stove another once-over before tromping back outside for good.

“ _Hey, don't leave_.” Shiro calls, but his voice is quickly drowned out by Keith shutting the apartment door.

_A problem for another day_ , he decides.

\-----

Shiro doesn't return for another few days, to the point where Keith's starting to think he'd hallucinated it all, what with the multitude of spirit voices that seem to be clogging his brain as of late. _Too many clients_ , he tells himself. Best not to stress himself out.

And then he hears him again. While on that border between wakefulness and unconscious release.

“ _Hey. You left the lights on in the living room_.”

“Turn 'em off yourself,” Keith grumbles.

“ _I can't mantain physical form_.” Shiro sounds resigned, and Keith sluggishly drags himself to the living room light-switch after a silent moment. He flicks the switch off.

“Why d’you care so much about my utilities bill anyway?” Keith grumbles into his duvet. “Go spook someone else.”

Shiro's voice drifts into his ears. “ _You're nice company_.”

“Sure I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading <3  
> if you want to support me, feel free to click the button on my tumblr's sidebar  
> (swummeng-geys.tumblr.com)


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